


Finding Their Way

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Background Femslash, Established Relationship, F/F, Non-Explicit, Post-Canon, Post-War, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-04-06 12:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19063138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: When Shadow Moon comes back to the States, he runs into Sam Black Crow and is both pleased and a little bit uneasy.





	Finding Their Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mistynights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistynights/gifts).



> This is a post-canon story taking place after all the novellas (which you do not need to read to understand the story. It just means Shadow isn't traveling abroad anymore).

Shadow is back in America and nothing feels quite like being here again. In a way it’s all the same. He is shaving in yet another dirty mirror like he did in the very first days out of prison. There’s something about being back in the States that pulls him into old habits, road-worn and a little nervous everywhere he steps. He half expects Wednesday to pop up out of nowhere, but he knows that won’t happen, intellectually. He can feel something else in the air. Not quite like that one big lasting storm, but something. Something familiar like the feeling of somebody’s eyes on the back of his head.

At least Wednesday isn’t staring back at him in the mirror. He was never the kindest Odin that Shadow met.

Instead, he steps gingerly away from the mirror, and Sam Black Crow finds him when he’s coming out of that gas station. He’s freshly shorn, at least, and it’s when he sees her that he realizes how much he seems to be retreading in his old steps.

Maybe that’s why Sam Black Crow knows exactly how to find him. It makes total sense to him that she would find a way.

He’s pretty sure he would recognize her as well as he would any old war buddy. They’ve been through too much together for him not to immediately think of her when confronted with such a free spirit. He’s still not above second guessing himself, but then she laughs and it’s clear he was right on the money the moment his eyes landed on her.

“Shadow Moon! Of course they’d give me a way to find you again!” she says.“That’s so typical.”

The look on her face tells him she’s thinking it too: what’s about to happen next?

Still, it’s Sam. They’ve always had an easy camaraderie, so he focuses on that and will leave the rest for the ravens. He smiles, just a hint of his own uneasiness making its way into his expression. He figures they both know how uneasy and happy they are to see each other at the same time.

He wants to ask her what she thinks it means, but he also doesn’t want to ask at all.

“Listen, I’m here with Natalie. My girlfriend. Our car’s broken down but as much as I love it, Purple Rain’s always been a lemon and is entirely the wrong car for meeting Shadow Moon in so...we can come with you, right?”

They both know that of course she can.

“Of course,” he says. “I’d love to meet her.”

“Oh, good. She’s good, Shadow. We’re good. Shit. I didn’t think you’d be back.”

“Well. Here I am,” he says.

“Apparently so. Great. I’ll go get her. Wait right here.”

Natalie looks a little dusty, like they’ve both been out in the sun too long and Natalie’s the one who checked and re-checked the engine of the broken down car.

He knows that Sam would check it too, but Natalie has that slightly nervous energy that means she’d check it again.

Besides that, though, they’re moving together like a couple in sync, a good match. He actually remembers how long they’ve been together, but by the time he’d left America it was almost as if he was so much a shadow he’d barely been there at all.

He likes that Sam can see him this time, but he won’t do anything as foolish as give her flowers again. Sam is her own person and has clearly found someone she was meant to find.

“Hey. Flowers guy,” Natalie says and winks in a way that reminds him of people who are long dead.

“Not gonna live that one down. Yeah. That’s me,” he says.

“It’s okay, you know. We’re good now. Always wondered about you, though,” Natalie says. “I guess now’s my chance to see how you are.”

She and Sam exchange an unhurried, knowing smile and Sam bumps arms with her gently.

“You know,” Sam says, “This is maybe a little goofy or maybe I just want to think about dead white settlers, but I was about to tell Nat I’ve never been to Salem. Wanna go?”

He laughs. “You’re kidding me, right? No, you wouldn’t kid about that. Sure, why not.”

“It’s not like it’s a roadside attraction and I can promise there isn’t a weird old man there, it’s mostly women. You know. Witches.”

“True,” Shadow says. 

Sam is now curled up in the back seat beside Natalie but she leans forward and states her opinion loudly as Shadow drives. 

She lets Natalie fall asleep against her shoulder and they look like they’re perfect like that, a painting of what trust and love are like.

“You two are really good together, just like you said,” Shadow says, surprised at himself for weighing in on anyone else’s relationship.

“You know, Shadow. With everything that was going on, you could feel it for miles around, in the air. Things got really weird. Natalie was kinda seeing me fall apart, and we didn’t want to lose each other, but we took a break. Both saw other people. But in the end I knew there was this one very special person who’d seen a lot of me at my worst and it hadn’t been her that ran. So we’re back together, and it’s been a while. We’re going strong.”

Shadow smiles. “It has been a while. With the war over and everything, I’ve been all over the place, seems like, and there you are. I’m happy for you, Sam. It’s been good to see you, and more than that, good to see you _happy_.

“Thanks, Shadow.”

“No problem.”

“All that...it was a big mess and a lot of work. I’m proud of how I came out of the war too,” she says. 

“You should be.”

Shadow turns the car further east and thinks about how he’s never stayed in one of those B&Bs before. He’ll find one so the two of them can get a proper night’s rest after their car breaking down.

* * *

When they’re all awake again, Sam says, “We should get a taste of the fake crap before we go and see the witches."

“You think some of the fake crap is in Salem?” he asks.

“Do I think Salem has capitalists in it? Sure. But I have this feeling, you know, the energy’ll be different there. We should find one of those shops that’s nowhere near it, first. Then we can compare the vibes.”

“Okay. If you want.”

“You know. Too much incense. Weird rocks everywhere.”

Shadow closes his eyes for a second and realizes that though he has barely been anywhere on the East Coast he knows exactly where to find one of those.

“Talk about a roadside attraction.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sam says.

“I wonder if they work the same anymore,” he muses and takes the right exit on auto-pilot.

He heads them right into traffic and Sam squeals with delight. “We can play the license plate game!”

He is not the type who has ever played the license plate game before and it doesn’t seem like it would be fun. Then again, pretty much anything can be fun when he’s with Sam, so he’ll give it a try.

They find license plates from five states quickly enough and Shadow thinks no wonder they’re in a traffic hell. He reminds himself how many people must think New England is quaint and a good place to visit. He wonders how many gods lived here that Wednesday never even bothered with. He likely decided he’d wait for them to come to him.

By the time they make it to the shop, Sam and Nat look as tired as he feels and they’re looking around with an annoyance that he knows they don’t have to practice.

“Definitely not the real deal,” Sam says, picking up the things in the shop that look the most fake. 

Shadow laughs. “Well, you did ask to come here.”

“So is it my fault?”

He shrugs. “Not really. It’s an interesting exercise, though.” He thinks of how hard he tried to avoid all of this kind of stuff, but of course with Sam here it makes sense that all of it would come and find him.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m glad this happened. You finding me.”

“Me too,” she says.

While Shadow and Sam are together, he knows there won’t be any more staring into dirty gas station mirrors, wondering if a god will stare back at him. The mirrors are clean and so are the sheets in the B&B they find, still relying on Shadow’s internal senses of where things are.

That night he hears Sam and Natalie giggling together as if they’re hearing each other’s jokes for the very first time and he lets their young joy in each other’s company help him settle into sleep.

They drive through quiet towns with their own art in the town centers and Sam dares him to go in an antique shop and see how long he can get one of the owners to talk to him for. 

Sam doesn’t get everything she wants on this trip, though. They peer at all of the pieces of furniture on the outside of shops but Shadow doesn’t go inside.

He prefers being on the periphery of things these days, the edges, the way his name has always directed him to. He’s been done being the center of attention for a long time now, and he realizes one of the good things about being with Sam is that she draws a lot of that to herself and she’s more or less fine with it from what Shadow can tell.

“This compare and contrast is gonna be fun,” Sam says. She lets herself settle a little sideways to drape across Natalie’s chest and Natalie encircles her with her arms.

They glide into Salem at sunset and Sam says, “Cool! We should check out the cemetery right when it’s getting dark. This is perfect.”

“Sure you don’t wanna wait til midnight?”

“Hey. Dead people are dead people. But we could stay til midnight if you want.”

He chuckles, thinking fondly of his time in the funeral home. He’s not sure if he needs a repeat performance. “You can if you want. I can figure out where we’re staying tonight if I get bored.”

“Yeah, I guess you’ve had enough spooky,” she says.

“Yeah. Haven’t you?”

“Apparently not.”

He laughs. That’s typical too. When he thinks it, he realizes there’s no question Sam Black Crow is rubbing off on him.

The cemetery rubs off on him, too. He won’t forget it, and he supposes that, yeah, maybe the witches are in on it by now that they’re an attraction of sorts. It’s funny, really, and makes him think of other cemeteries he’s been to. The place where Laura was never involved gaining the consent of the dead for entry.

The others he’s been to are always weirdly tacky, though, in a way Wednesday would have appreciated. _Always on my mind._

Even, especially, when Shadow would rather not think of the old man.

Maybe the gods have never been here. Maybe the witches keep them out.

This is a good place. He’s glad he’s come to see it.

He knows that he and Sam can both feel the way the cemetery calls to anyone who can hear it. It’s not a distressed kind of call, but it’s there to be heard.

“It’s almost like this place has music,” Natalie says, bumping gently against Sam so that Sam cradles her against her body in answer to Nat’s words.

“Yeah, baby. It’s got something all right,” Sam says. “Glad you’re here too.

And he smiles, thinking of Sam and Nat, and the way that he sees Natalie can feel it in her own way. Of course she can. Sam couldn’t be with anyone who was phoning it in. They make a really good team.

They stay long into the night and then drive, late, to the next B&B. He would be self-conscious about arriving late, but he figures anyone in this part of the state is used to people arriving at all hours. Anyone who rents to people driving up to Salem would have to be.

The next morning they know that whatever they came here for is almost out of their system, but they do try out the shops. They’re quaint. Squeezed into tiny spaces and some of their items are authentic and some are for tourists. As usual Sam tells them apart with ease.

Sam is a good travel companion. Maybe she would have been good to keep around for longer back on his first American road trip, but he supposes that she stuck around for exactly what she needed to.

He shivers at the thought and realizes he’s ready to go.

He meets Sam’s eyes and she nods. She feels it in the air. They’re both ready.

Natalie squeezes Sam’s arm. “Let’s get out of here,” she says.

The three of them share an awkward smile and head for the car.

They leave Salem behind with the New England sun beating down on them and Sam says, “I’m here for more of all of this. The New England vibe. You know, I hear the sunsets are amazing in Maine. Wanna go?”

Shadow smiles. “You got it,” he says, and he doesn’t know when this time with one of his greatest friends is going to end, but he does know it won’t be right now. It’s a drive from here to Maine, and whatever happens with Sam here, he’s ready for it.


End file.
